Sorry
by DessertsAreStressed
Summary: (Post-Movie) Even after the Great Thaw, there are many things left unfinished. One of those things involve a certain prince. And Anna is determined to find out if he was or wasn't sorry. (One-shot)


Anna's footsteps rang out loud and clear while she walked through the dungeon. The underground prison was cold and dank and Anna couldn't help thinking that this way no way for anyone to be treated. Although, very few prisoners were kept here, only ones that were a minor threat, or ones that had to be captured and put in a prison immediately and this was the closest one. Like assassins.

Anna hated this place with a passion. She could remember stories a mean caretaker told her, of the dungeon being a place with the worst of the worst vermin being kept here, where rats could swallow a human up whole. _You'd better eat, young lady, or you'll wind up there too! _Anna almost laughed, hearing her snooty and nasally voice in her head. But then she remembered why she was here.

She moved through the hall in an unusual silence, shivering as she passed a cell covered in ice with a gaping hole in the wall. It had been only two days since her sister had thawed the Winter and the Kingdom was still recovering. An unexpected repercussion of the two-day winter was an increase of people coming down with a cold from the sudden change in weather. Anna herself was sick from fatigue and a major cold, possibly influenza. But she had to do this. If she didn't today, she wouldn't get another chance.

A guard standing in front of the cell she wanted to enter (maybe _wanted_ wasn't the right word, she felt more compelled to) moved aside, nodding at the two guards with her. Drowning in her constant drone of thought, she couldn't even remember when the guards had joined her. The dyne of doubt continued as she entered in the cell.

In the corner sat Hans. He sat with his back to the door. His coat was discarded on the ground and he sat shivering next to it. Why doesn't he wear the coat? His red hair was disheveled as if he had been running his hands through it. The air of grace and refinement he once possessed was long gone, even after only two days. He was now a slouching mess of hatred and self-pity.

Anna wondered if he regretted what he had done. Maybe he had loved her in his own twisted way, but couldn't see past his greed. He did have 12 older brothers. (Anna had assumed this was true, as he had no reason to lie about it. Although, when they took off his shoe to check for weapons, they found it was much bigger than his actual foot.) Maybe he just wanted to be important, so his brothers could see, that he was more than the spare of the spare of the spare. Anna herself often felt like the reject being only the second child, and she couldn't imagine the pain of being the 13th child.

Just as she began to feel an inkling of sympathy, he turned around and glared at her. Any speck of sympathy was instantly washed away. In that glare, everything he had done returned to her mind. _If only somebody loved you…_ She had many nightmares of him getting even closer to kissing her, just to reject her all over again, with those same cruel, cold eyes. But there was something else in his eyes today, something deeper than hate. She almost thought it was an apology.

"Hello, Hans," she said, trying hard to keep her voice even, to not let the ten thousand emotions floating around in her show in her eyes. He grunted. She swallowed. This was going to be even harder than she thought it would be.

She stood for a while, staring at him, wondering how everything went so wrong. How could a love that felt so real, so true, be all a lie? Surely some of it had to be real… right? She bit her lip and looked down, wondering how she could be so stupid, and how he could be so cruel.

"Why are you here?" He asked, not even trying to keep the impatience out of his tone. "Came to gloat?" He turned his back to her again.

"I came to talk to you." She told him.

He gave a sadistic laugh. "Did your blondie boy really get _that_ boring?" She repressed the need to defend Kristoff. She had to stay focused on what she wanted to say. She took a deep breath.

"Are you sorry?" She said, her words mashing together in a rushed manner. The question had been weighing on her mind for what felt like forever, and she felt relief just by getting it out on the table. Despite this relief, she was annoyed with herself for blurting it when she should have stayed calm. The annoyance got deeper when she noticed the expression on Hans's face.

He had turned back around, and looked like he was ready to laugh, as if she had just told him the best joke ever. "That's funny, Anna." His voice was monotone.

"I'm being serious," she said, letting a snip of annoyance leak into her voice. "Are you sorry?" She felt her voice break at the word sorry, but ignored it.

"Why would I be?" He asked. He knew exactly why, of course, and Anna understood this well. She said it anyway.

"You fed off of my loneliness and desperation for love to give yourself power. You told me you'd never shut me out, knowing I'd believe you, also knowing you would have to do that very thing. You let me believe you loved me. You let me fall in what I thought was love with you. You left me to freeze to death from the inside, from the heart you had poisoned with your pseudo-love." Anna let the emotion spill into her voice full force. "You then tried to convince my sister that she was a monster and attempted to kill her. You knew what I wanted. I wanted love. I wanted _you_. I wanted my sister. Everything you did was an attempt to take those things even farther away from me."

There was a still, uncomfortable silence. Anna kept her gaze directed at Hans. Tears flowed down her cheeks, her face a stony mask. Hans looked down to the ground, not letting any emotion leak on his face. He seemed to be thinking it over. They stood that way, neither of them moving an inch. The air was suffocating. Just when Anna was going to break the silence, Hans looked up, a cruel, unnatural smile etched across his face.

"I'd do it over again."

Five more words that would be carved into Anna's brain. She felt her stomach lurch. She understood his words perfectly. It answered her question honestly. She should've left. She wanted to leave. But something kept her there. Something she noticed in his eyes. They were screaming the opposite.

_I'm sorry,_ his eyes shouted, _I'm sorry. I'm sorry._

Anna wasn't sure if she actually saw it or if it was a figment of her imagination. Whatever it was, it was gone in the next instant, hidden behind his words. But she knew it was still there. It was shoved underneath a layer of ice, never to resurface again.

_The only frozen heart around here is yours_. She remembered saying these words so clearly. But a frozen heart could be melted, couldn't it? Her heart was thawed, as was Elsa's and all of Arendelle. She had seen enough thawing to know that it could happen. She needed to show him love. Love in a way he had never seen before.

She closed her eyes and let out the words that had been sitting on the tip of her tongue waiting to plunge into Hans's ears and hopefully his heart.

"I forgive you."

She opened her eyes to an almost shell-shocked Hans. He just gaped at her. She turned around and walked out of the cell before she could regret those words. She could tell while walking that even the guards were shocked. Whether they thought she was gracious or stupid, she didn't know. She didn't want to know. She walked back upstairs into the light of day, and smiled, knowing she did what she could, and that was all that mattered. Maybe, just maybe, she had begun the process of thawing Hans's frozen heart.


End file.
